People that diss pop music...(rant)

Gary Blanchard said:
I think the problem is not pop music, but the music industry that has turned music and musicians into product. :hippie:
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I don't think that fingerpointing is helpful.

The 'machine' (which is partly mythical) has always produced good music since its inception, though I'd never argue that it's been anywhere near consistent.

Flipside, it lets audiences off the hook for their disinterest and/or complacency.

And, as old as you are, you can't possibly remember a time where music wasn't product. Now it's just more honest about it because the current audience has grown up with really aggressive advertising and consumer research, is totally jaded, and would see right through the Peter, Paul, and Marys of the world.
 
Gorgon90 said:
Think this nails it for me. There have always been performers who sung and played other people's songs (see Motown references earlier in the thread). They don't necessarily have to be able to write in my book but if you're going to get up and perform you should at least be singing it in tune and definitely not miming.
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Also actors should perform their own stunts and CGI should be bant.
 
vonbladet said:
Also actors should perform their own stunts and CGI should be bant.
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I don't think you're serious, but acting as if you were...

Nope, but they should be able to act.

Singers or "singers" should be able to sing. Doctors should literally be able to practice medicine. Lawyers should be able to comprehend and apply the law to their work. Teachers should be able to teach. Stenographers should be able to type. In any other profession outside of those within the realm of "entertainment", if you can't actually do your job you don't get to have a job. Chefs should know how and be able to prepare food (and cook as required).

Dancing and light shows are the stunts and CGI of music that have nothing to do with musical ability.
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
Singers or "singers" should be able to sing.
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What is "should"? (All your other examples are real guilds with real guild discipline.) And why? An autotuned singer is no worse than a CGI puppet.

Dancing and light shows are the stunts and CGI of music that have nothing to do with musical ability.
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I like pop music better than I mostly like "musical ability". That way lies prog and fusion and all the other crawling horrors of middlebrow over-accomplishment.
 
In the not too distant future computers will analyze your brain and compose music just for you on the spot. You are gonna love being controlled utterly.
 
vonbladet said:
What is "should"? (All your other examples are real guilds with real guild discipline.) And why? An autotuned singer is no worse than a CGI puppet.
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Okay, bait taken again...

Being able to sing in tune and in key. Basic musical skills for any instrument...as you know.

I like autotune just as much as I like CGI puppets...that's not entirely true, because I actually love this and it's all thanks to autotune:

 
yabba said:
they are able to entertain, ergo they're able to keep their jobs.
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I can't and won't account for bad taste in anything. :thu:

But again, success in that industry is not related to talent. Popularity does not equal quality. Fortunately there has been a wealth of excellent popular music throughout history that I get to enjoy. Modern myopic "pop" music doesn't do much for me, while there's a lot of great popular music as broadly defined earlier that I love. It's not getting tons of airplay (or any) on ClearChannel and other big media outlets, but it's great stuff.

What entertains me is just the music. Even when I put on youtube clips of live performances, I go on to other things on whatever device I'm using and just listen to the music. The packaging that helps sell to the masses doesn't interest me (at least as related to the music). Homely folks making good music is always preferable to "attractive" folks making unpleasant music.

And let's be honest, it's not ab0ut their ability to entertain, it's about their ability to make their makers money. As long as that keeps happening they will be marketed. And with the 360 deals they've likely signed, that means someone else will almost always be making vastly more money than these artists will ever see for the rest of their lives.
 
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Dogsinotpalc said:
What entertains me is just the music. Even when I put on youtube clips of live performances, I go on to other things on whatever device I'm using and just listen to the music.
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That's what I like. And by "the music" I mean the sounds coming out of the speakers, irrespective of how they got there. Whether it's autotuned vocals over sub-bass kickdrums, or completely programmed techno, or sampled and bitcrushed or even done by moving fingers on a fretboard like an animal.

What you value isn't just "the music" in that sense of a purely acoustic phenomenon, it is and I quote:

Being able to sing in tune and in key. Basic musical skills for any instrument...as you know.
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I guess I know you say that, and I don't disbelieve you, I just find your process-fetish a pointless and a bit odd. There are other places to draw lines: many jazzists would displeased by tracking parts separately, or overdubs or comping takes; some classicalists would be dismayed at the amount of signal-chain manipulation that is unremarkable in even the most authenticist rock session.

I am fascinated by how music is made, from the way compressors and eq are used to "glue" tracks recorded separately into the same acoustic space, to analogue synthesis, down to actually playing an actual hand drum, or bass in a blues-rock band. (In the latter cases, I probably enjoy the performance more than anyone enjoys listening, but life is after all hard.)

And to prove I am not just trolling, here is my recent recording of me singing (badly) over a largely robotic performance of Judas and the Priests' "Diamonds and Rust."



(I was going to try and do an Earth, Wind and Fire version, but my bass chops weren't up to it. I did record the midi control data of the virtual analogue synth filter section live in a single take, if that helps.)
 
vonbladet said:
That's what I like. And by "the music" I mean the sounds coming out of the speakers, irrespective of how they got there. Whether it's autotuned vocals over sub-bass kickdrums, or completely programmed techno, or sampled and bitcrushed or even done by moving fingers on a fretboard like an animal.

What you value isn't just "the music" in that sense of a purely acoustic phenomenon, it is and I quote:



I guess I know you say that, and I don't disbelieve you, I just find your process-fetish a pointless and a bit odd. There are other places to draw lines: many jazzists would displeased by tracking parts separately, or overdubs or comping takes; some classicalists would be dismayed at the amount of signal-chain manipulation that is unremarkable in even the most authenticist rock session.

I am fascinated by how music is made, from the way compressors and eq are used to "glue" tracks recorded separately into the same acoustic space, to analogue synthesis, down to actually playing an actual hand drum, or bass in a blues-rock band. (In the latter cases, I probably enjoy the performance more than anyone enjoys listening, but life is after all hard.)

And to prove I am not just trolling, here is my recent recording of me singing (badly) over a largely robotic performance of Judas and the Priests' "Diamonds and Rust."



(I was going to try and do an Earth, Wind and Fire version, but my bass chops weren't up to it. I did record the midi control data of the virtual analogue synth filter section live in a single take, if that helps.)
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No fetish, it is just through empirical study of music...that is to say listening to it with my ears (the sound that comes out of speakers or head phones often mixed with endless amounts of environmental background and/or white noise) has found very little to like in pop music. Any genre or subgenre, but the more commercially popular stuff tends to get more and more homogenized. There is little to nothing new or interesting to my ears. When something is interesting it tends to get overdone and becomes uninteresting.

I find the artists I've enjoyed over the years are capable. My favorites are generally capable in every facet of composing, playing, and performing music. Some are even excellent producers. That said, there are many that are not writers (or not great writers), but are excellent performers and I adore them. Generally speaking I have gotten very little (if any) enjoyment from the music that is mass produced by artists that cannot perform the music that has made them famous or popular. And it's the displeasing music they make that is the real issue. I didn't know that Taylor Swift didn't really write her own tunes, I just didn't enjoy the stuff I heard from her. Having watched seconds of live clips showing she couldn't actually sing was lame...seemed a minimum requirement for a singer. You don't see it that way and that's fine.

As a fan of creative artists, I can get a bit sad and angry that someone like a Todd Park Mohr is relatively unknown while Taylor Swift is the face of popular music. The fact that there are game show contestants winning Grammys (which I realize aren't really a stamp of legitimacy either) just speaks to system where creativity isn't valued. When people who can't sing or can't play instruments have massive careers as musicians while so many excellent musicians struggle to be heard, it seems art suffers.

I get it though, we disagree. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm also not judging you or your perception, just the music that the industry creates it. In my listening experiencing there is some much more out there that deserves attention, but just as media is controlled by six mega corps, over the years the music industry has been focusing more and more of it's time and money on creating and maintaining the success of fewer and fewer artists, very few of whom are part of the creative process and I think that has some value. The cookie cutter process isn't adding anything that I want to listen to the repertoire of popular music.
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
I get it though, we disagree. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm also not judging you or your perception, just the music that the industry creates it. In my listening experiencing there is some much more out there that deserves attention, but just as media is controlled by six mega corps, over the years the music industry has been focusing more and more of it's time and money on creating and maintaining the success of fewer and fewer artists, very few of whom are part of the creative process and I think that has some value. The cookie cutter process isn't adding anything that I want to listen to the repertoire of popular music.
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OK, if you're not judging, I won't judge either. A final* remark: to me, somebody like Max Martin is totally an artist, and a very good one, even if it's not usually his name in the big letters on the hypothetical record-sleeve. (C.f., in another golden age of pop, Phil Spector. A cookie cutter of genius who often released records by his factory singers with a more marketable singer's name on them.)
 
vonbladet said:
OK, if you're not judging, I won't judge either. A final* remark: to me, somebody like Max Martin is totally an artist, and a very good one, even if it's not usually his name in the big letters on the hypothetical record-sleeve. (C.f., in another golden age of pop, Phil Spector. A cookie cutter of genius who often released records by his factory singers with a more marketable singer's name on them.)
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My last word is that regardless of Max's artistry, I don't like his music. I don't seek to dislike I just don't enjoy the harmonic and melodic development, the arrangments, the voices of most of the singers that end up singing his tunes. And again, many of those singers can't sing. I get the Motown was the Hit Factory, but look at their roster of artists, even after the move to L.A. ... there are some of the most amazing pipes in the history of popular music. Stevie, Marvin, Smokey, MJ, Richie, Badu, Gladys, Ruffin, India...I can do listen to this stuff all the time. Amazing stuff. Even the old technology and technique of a record (to quote Ani), being the record of event of people playing music in a room...not isolation chambers and recording at different times, but the band working and recording together, there's a vibe and interaction that can't be replicated. Which brings me to the ability to perform music live if you're an artist or singer. I love and listening to records, but live music is absolute magic. Dancing and lip-syncing or autotuning to cover up lack of ability is just fucking lame.

Martin may be an artist, but the faces of his music, the folks that sell the songs based on their look and marketing...few of them are.
 
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